An increasing number of organizations are adopting business intelligence solutions over relational databases. However, the schema of these relational databases may change and the changes may occur after a report has been created. When the schema of the underlying relational database changes, accessing or running the report will result in error.
A report collects database data from a database. To collect database data, a report relies on knowledge of the underlying database schema. The database schema represents the structure of the database, such as database table names, database column names, and other items, such as indexes, fields, relationships, and any other items that may be required to define how the data is stored in the database.
To obtain data from a database, a report requests the data via referencing database table names and columns. If the names change, or if any of the columns or tables are modified, the report will either result in an error, or will obtain incorrect data. If a report produces an error, the problem that caused the error may have to be analyzed and the report may have to be fixed manually.